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Sony : SRS-X11

When it comes to portable speakers you want three main things: clear sound and volume, strong battery life and lightness of weight. The Sony SRS-X11 provides all three of those things with a confidence you’d expect from such a big brand.

The Sony SRS-X11 is small and easy to carry around but it has a robust nature that suggests it isn’t going to break very easily. That’s particularly helpful when lugging it around on your travels.

It also has the power to please, its highest volume taxing the battery but not your ears with good clarity across the soundstage and limited distortion. We would suggest placing the speaker on a hard surface rather than the bed or other soft surface as the Sony SRS-X11 prefers a more assured footing to deliver its best attributes.

However, the speaker boasts that it will “hang” from any suitable hook and offer great sounds anywhere. We found it did just that, making it pleasingly portable. But we’d still argue its best performance was while sat on a hard surface.

The cube aesthetic is a nice change from the rectangles you often see across the market with a range of colours suiting various tastes. The speaker will comfortably provide 12 hours of battery life listening at “normal” levels. Indeed, any small room such as an office or bedroom will enjoy the clarity of the SRS-X11 without the need to turn up to full volume like some weak competitors.

We found the speaker had an ability to punch above its weight in terms of competitors in price, size and sound. And at a very affordable recommended retail price of £70, Sony’s portable speaker is an even more attractive proposition.